Various special exercise garments have been made to provide isometric exercising for the legs and arms. These garments are generally specialty garments that are worn for the purpose of aerobic exercises only and generally have resistance bands sewn into the garments mainly down the arms and legs. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,074, includes bands that encircle the legs from the hips to the ankle, or in the case of short pants, from the waist to the end of the pants. Other garments have pockets or channels in the garment itself to allow a resistance band to slide into the pockets or channels during exercising and removed after exercising as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,258,014. Other devices, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,186,701 and 2,097,376, use bands that encircle the waist, ankles and wrists with elastic straps between the bands. The devices are cumbersome and are not suitable for wearing when not exercising.
Individual stretchable exercise resistance bands that are not attached to clothing are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,819,177, 4,815,731 and 5,357,637. These devices are used primarily for exercising the muscles of the legs in conjunction with exercise pant garments or a more casual, everyday pant but do not allow for spontaneity because the stretchable exercise resistance bands are not permanently attached to the pant garment and must be carried with you to perform exercises for the lower body and then removed and stored when not in use.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,109,546 relates to an exercise suit with form fitting pants and a pullover top made of a stretchable material having reinforcing segments with helically wound leg and arm resistance bands attached integrally to the suit.
While such garments may have been satisfactory for certain situations they offer limited resistance to tone muscles and generally could not be casually worn while performing normal daily activities.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have an exercise garment that is comfortable to wear and/or provides sufficient muscle toning.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,600, the leg portion of the device has an elastic resistance web that may be permanently attached to one leg, or completely removable, and is anchored to the opposing leg by means of hooks/loops or other types of fasteners to perform exercises for the lower body. This device does not allow the user to train the muscles of the lower body, more precisely the buttocks or inner thighs, one leg at a time since it is not intended to be affixed to a stationary object. Also, the resistance may only be increased or decreased by having to have additional resistant webs with various tensions. Furthermore, this also prevents the user from exercising the muscles of the inner thigh.